


arsonist's lullabye

by nibling (twistedsisters)



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsisters/pseuds/nibling
Summary: ehlan of oakclaw tells her new husband a biographical bedtime story.





	arsonist's lullabye

Their  wedding is not well attended. Neither Griff nor Ehlan have friends in the traditional sense, and most in court who would feel obligated out of politeness (and fear, a little bit) turned their noses up publicly and privately at a well respected member of court stepping below her rank in such a way (she of noble birth and he of no standing at all). Perhaps, to ask those in attendance, this is for the better. The groom is a good foot and a half shorter than his bride, which cuts a foolish sight, though none of them dare laugh. Griff and Ehlan don’t care. Any acquaintances or ties they have in the court are expendable and meaningless; even the officiant is ignored, ultimately, though they say the proper words on cue. Everything - from the matching clothes to the venue to the arrangement of the seats and flowers - is a show, meant for the appeasement of others. Rehearsed perfectly, just like all their other interactions with outsiders, though no less keenly felt for it.

It’s partially about their social standing, and about the benefits a legal partnership brings. While it’s certainly not unheard of for nobles to take lovers, or even live out of wedlock (look at the king and queen, for god’s sake) but an official partnership adds legitimacy to both people involved. And if they’re going to achieve anything, legitimacy is exactly what they’ll need. But that’s not all of it, by a long shot. It’s not a sham, it’s not _just_ a series of transactions or transferrals of power, or even emotionless sex. Ehlan had never expected to love anyone in her life as much as she set out to love herself - and yet as they discussed the pragmatism of the marriage, some six months before the event itself, something in her chest surged into her throat, and looked over to see Griff similarly affected. While the idea had begun as a practicality, it revealed, in both of them, a desire - no, a need. One that neither had realized they possessed. It was fated - how had marriage ever _not_ been seen as an eventuality?

Their wedding night was not some awkward virginal fumbling by a longshot - they’d fallen into the rhythms of each other’s bodies long ago. Sweaty and half-asleep, curled around each other with their backs turned to the world, Griff whispers, “Tell me how you got here.”

Ehlan rolls her eyes. “You know the story.”

“I know of your house. I know of _its_ story. I know that you arrived at the keep with nothing but your name and used your wits to bolster yourself to a high position at the lord’s ear.” He pushes up onto his elbows to look at her in the dwindling candlelight. “But I know nothing of the girl you were, or what drove you here.”

She keeps her eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling. “Why would you want to know a silly thing like that?”

Griff runs a finger along the edge of her jaw and she lets him turn her head so he’s looking into her eyes. He’s much closer than she thought, their noses practically touching; he’s fond of sneaking in like that when he can. “It’s your past. Probably something a husband should know about his wife. And besides,” he purred, shifting to settle between her legs, his back against her stomach, “I want to know all of you. Everything.”

“Well, who am I to deny you?” She shifts so her legs were more comfortably positioned around him and clears her throat. “Once upon a time.”

Griff tuts in disapproval - _bards -_ and she chuckles. “Once upon a time,” she whispers in his ear, smoothing his sweat-damp locks with one hand, “there was a young and foolish girl.”

\--

Once upon a time, there was a young and foolish girl. She was born of noble blood, but that blessing had soured due to her father’s ambition, and by the time the girl could walk, the family’s name and honor were in tatters. So the girl was raised in limbo: both noble and not, both common and not. The girl grew as the staff dwindled to nothing; learned to walk in fields that lay fallow until her parents took to the plough themselves (a task they resented); taught herself to read in a library thick with dust and sitting rooms that hadn’t seen a social gathering in her lifetime. But she found she didn’t mind work, be it with her books or, when she was older, with a plough.  Few things made her prouder than seeing results from her efforts, and pride was a rare bird in her house. The girl - ( _“Oh, come on. You don’t have to talk in the third person, Ehlan. I know it’s you.” “You are ruining the mood of the story. Be quiet. Where was I?”_ ) -The girl would take it where she could get it. Still, though - if pride was rare, power was mythical. Something about which memories were shared in whispers, something to be thirsted after, something to wielded as both a weapon and a shield.

The girl was all too familiar with the weapon. Forced to attend High Holiday events at the keep with the other noble families, she was on the receiving end of its blows. She and her parents were avoided as if contagious, and yet any absence was remarked upon; it was an unspoken rule that they show their faces, perhaps as an example to others. The girls her age would talk openly about her family, as they hadn’t yet learned, as their mothers had, to laugh behind their hands. The girl found, as the years went by, that she preferred the open mockery. That she could handle - it wasn’t cowardice, which hereditary power seemed to breed far more than it did any virtue.

While the other noble families, with their double faces and cruel laughter, grew their livestock and land and hoarded their wealth, the girl watched her parents grow weathered and sink in on themselves like rotting pumpkins left in the sun. Most days she spent mimicking the servants she’d seen at other houses, stiff and quiet, sinking into the wallpaper when unwanted. It was almost a relief to her when her father killed himself. She didn’t have to hide quite so much from his outbursts, and it felt like a portion of the curse of bearing his name had been lifted. Some unseen vice around her lungs had been loosened, and she could finally breathe, albeit only slightly.

The girl found her father’s notes in his study as she packed his things. Her mother was in no state to do so, and it, as so many things had been, was left to her. She read his journals, where he chronicled his ambitions, his hopes for her, his plans to climb and truly make their house great - failures, all. His words and schemes were almost disappointingly predictable. She’d once thought that perhaps her father was a great man, with noble intentions or even a spark of creativity. But it was all the same; she already knew too well the ways that power or its lack could twist people to cruelty and selfishness.

In the pages she found a name, though she didn’t recognize it for one at first. It was written in a language she didn’t know, practically carved by some heavy hand into the paper, the script forbidden and toxic. The girl ripped the page from her father’s notes and kept it, folded, in her pocket everywhere she went. The rest she burned, and she scattered the ashes of her father’s ambition in the freshly tilled fields. Perhaps, the girl thought, something decent might finally grow from them.

She took to his library - and when her father’s books failed her, into the larger ones scattered across the city, into seedy bookstores and even braving the stares in the keep when poring over its public collection. She’d flip through page after page after page until her vision went blurry and her head pounded, and yet she couldn’t find the text, or even the tongue it was written in. She dared not show it to anyone, lest they recognize it or her father’s handwriting and suspect what she was up to. After months of ceaseless searching, it seemed as though she’d read every book on linguistics, antiquity, history, arcana, and even cryptography in the city, or perhaps even in existence. Frustrated after another fruitless day, she took the scrap of paper out of her pocket and tried once more to discern its meaning - nothing. Nothing at all. The girl (not usually prone to tantrums, but exhausted and cranky) tossed the scrap in the fire, vowing to give up the venture and find her revenge another way.

When the flames swallowed the paper, time stilled, and everything went cold.

The fire stopped flickering in the hearth; the remains of the paper stopped their aimless path up the chimney; the clatter of the road went silent. The girl was cold, but she could still move. As she looked around, trying to take stock of her newly still surroundings, her home began to melt away, sinking into a puddle at her feet: the table, the chairs,  the mantlepiece, the candles, the window, the hearth and the fire it held. All dripped down, revealing not the front of the manse, not the street beyond, but a black expanse of nothingness dotted with far away stars. Purple, blue, and red swirls of light curled in on themselves and back out, lazily chasing each other across the sky. She looked down and saw nothing under her feet but the same inky void and those same far off stars, but she wasn’t falling. She hopped a little in place and felt something supporting, though she couldn’t see it. She was overcome with light-headedness and closed her eyes against the void, the cold she’d originally felt sinking deeper into her bones.

Suddenly, the world around her shook - so hard she nearly fell backwards, to her terror - and a great groaning, like metal twisting against metal, echoed across the emptiness as, in front of her, a huge black shape rose from nowhere, swallowing the light and the colors dancing in the distance. Whatever it was - the huge thing, with tentacles longer than the girl’s entire body - opened its eyes and took her in. When it spoke, its language sounded garbled and deep and ancient, and its voice boomed across the space, and though she didn’t recognize its words, she found that she understood it all the same.

**Oh! Hello.**

“....Hello.”

**You destroyed my name.**

The girl blinked.  “Was that a name?”

**Yes. A final vestige - names are important to things like me. Without one I’ll stop being.**

Shrug. “I was frustrated.”

 **And now you’re afraid?** The thing blinked at her and its head (or at least the place where its eyes were) moved closer, to examine her.

The girl weighed her options: there didn’t seem to be a particular advantage to telling the truth, but no disadvantage either. “Yes,” she said.

 **There’s no need to be, Ehlan. I have no intention of hurting you.** It - well, it didn’t smile, having no mouth, but certain parts of it seemed to wrinkle up genially at her shock. **Yes, I know your name! Your father and I were quite close. Before his… mishap.**

 **  
** “His failure, you mean.”

 **Well. He did his best. That’s what counts.** The thing shook what might have been its head and sighed - cool wind rushed over the girl and blew her hair back like a storm. **I’m sorry you arrived here so suddenly, and me with no time to prepare. I’d have made a nice little nook for us to get acquainted.This will have to do. Here, sit**. A tentacle waved in her direction and the girl felt compelled to bend her legs, finding herself supported by a chair formed from the inky void she stood on, which mostly served to deepen the chill overtaking her. The massive thing situated itself across from her, looking very much like several large black squids glued together trying to perch on a stool.

 **I’m sure you have questions** , it said helpfully. **I’ll do my best to answer - a final gift to your father, we’ll say.**

The girl considered her options. “Will I leave here alive?”

 **Oh! Very direct, I see. Your father was the same way. That’s charming.** The space around the thing’s eyes furrowed as if it was frowning. **I’d be hurt, but… I know you don’t know any better. Yes, you’ll leave here alive. Returned exactly to where you were, I might add. I don’t eat pointy girls.**

“What kind of girls do you eat, then?”

Its brow-space furrowed more. **None. I don’t eat.**

“Drink their blood?”

**Well, I’m not a vampire, so no. And I don’t drink in general.**

The girl cocked her head to the side  and frowned.“Well, what _do_ you do?”

**Nothing. I sit, and I wait, and sometimes, when I’m lucky, someone powerful like you wanders along and wants to talk.**

The girl laughed. “I’m not powerful. You’d know that if you knew anything about my father at all. We’re a small house - all we had was our reputation, and thanks to you, even that is lost.”

The thing looked almost sad. **I know your father’s hopes didn’t quite pan out the way we wanted. And for that, and the pain it caused you, I’m sorry.** The thing leaned forward and placed a tentacle over one hand - but instead of making contact, it slipped through, ghostly, and floated halfway through her knee, as cold as a block of ice. **But you’re wrong. One’s name may be an indicator of power on your plane, but I’m capable of seeing something deeper. In you it’s weak yet, but it’s capable of becoming great.**

The girl scoffed and pulled her knee away, letting the thing’s tentacle flop to the invisible floor beneath her. It sighed and scooted forward slightly. **What do you want? More than anything in the world?**

The girl frowned. “What?”

**If you could have anything - do anything -** **_be_ ** **anything. If it was guaranteed.**

The girl made a great show of thinking: closing her eyes, sighing, bending slightly and putting one hand to her face. But of course she knew what she wanted - she’d known it before the question was even asked. “I want… revenge. I want… justice.”

  
**I said one thing.**

She looked up, staring the thing in the eye. “Can’t they be the same?”

The thing smiled at her again. **I suppose you’re right. Justice, then, and revenge. For whom?**

“Who do you think? My family. My father. Myself.”

The thing nodded, a tentacle stroking one side of its head-equivalent. **Understandable. I, too, wish that something could have been done to help him. But - incorporeal as I am…** It shrugged with six tentacles. **Nothing doing, unfortunately. You, though…**

The girl tried not to smile, though this was exactly what she’d wanted all along. “Me?”

 **Yes, you.** The thing slid off its invisible stool and moved to tower above her. **You must realize by now that your father and I had an…arrangement.**

“You’d grant him his wish in exchange for something you wanted.”

**I’d grant him power by way of magic to help him achieve his goals. And yes, in return, I would receive. It was an equal trade.**

“And what, then, did he give you, if you neither eat or drink? Souls? Secrets?”

The thing shook its head. **He gave me  experience. Look -** and as its tentacle waved, a bookshelf seemed to appear from nowhere, stacked with thick tomes bursting with pages. The thing pulled one down at random  and flicked it open, showing her. **See? Your first birthday. He said he’d never seen a more polite baby.** It closed the book and chose another. **And here - the day of his and your mother’s wedding. He was kind enough to include sketches for me, and a scrap of your mother’s veil.**

“They’re diaries,” the girl murmured, reaching out to trace the ink-stained lace.

 **In a way. But they’re not for his edification - they’re for mine.** The thing sighed and shut the book, settling in front of her again. **As I said, I do nothing but wait. I cannot eat or drink, I cannot sleep, I cannot touch a living thing. I’m all too willing to help those in need. All I ask in return is that I get to see the fruits of my labors - whether success or failure. I… wish to have some normal life again, even if it’s only through the pages of these books.**

“Were you mortal once?”

 **In a way. A very long time ago. But!** The thing tossed her father’s journal behind itself, waving a tentacle so it and the bookshelf disappeared again. **That is a story for another day, when we are, perhaps, better acquainted. For right now, all i need is an answer.**

“You got your answer. I want vengeance, and I want justice.”

**I meant to the question I implied with the first. Do you wish to enter a pact, Ehlan of Oakclaw, as did your father before you?**

The girl frowned. In her mind, she saw flashes of her father and mother shouting at each other, the laughing of the girls of higher-born families, felt the sting of shame as she walked through the street with her family, enduring stares, saw her mother wailing over her father’s casket -

 **I don’t need a definite right now,** the thing offered. **All I need to know is if you’re willing to consider. It helps to know in advance so I can keep a channel open to the material plane. Given that you burned up the last one.**

“I… will think about it.”

The thing clapped two sets of tentacles together, clearly delighted. **Fantastic! Take all the time you need, of course. Not like I’m going anywhere.**

“I’d like to go home now, I think,” the girl said. The cold was beginning to be unbearable, and her stomach ached.

 **Absolutely! I won’t take up anymore of your time.** Before her, a swirling arch opened, filled with the reds and purples and blues she’d seen dancing in the sky. **Not to oversell, but I can teach you how to do that, too. You can make it whatever color you like.** It looked her up and down, considering. **You seem like a leaf green sort of girl to me.**

“I like pink,” the girl said, stumbling towards the portal, one hand to her head.

**Even better! You can really make a statement with that. It pops!**

The girl reached out and felt her hand hit the edge of the portal - so it, too, was solid. She took a deep breath and turned back to look at the thing, which stared at her expectantly, as if it knew what she wanted to ask.

“Your name. The one I destroyed.”

**Yes?**

“I… never learned what it was.”

This time the thing smiled properly: a gaping half-moon opened in its form and revealed a series of small, jagged points that resembled both teeth and stars at once. **Oh? Are you sure you’d like to know?**

“Yes,” the girl whispered. She really felt ill now; she could hardly keep her eyes open, and, as she could no longer hold her head up, she let it loll against one side of the arch.

She heard a whoosh and could suddenly feel the thing’s huge frozen presence right beside her, almost enveloping entirely. The chill of it climbed her body, making her shiver uncontrollably until it reached her ear, and the thing whispered its name, and in her mind’s eye she could see the strange lettering on the scrap of paper seem to rearrange itself to ones she could decipher ( _and here, when Ehlan whispers the name of her patron in her husband’s ear for perhaps the second time ever, he shivers without wanting to, and the ever present darkness in the corners of her room seems to encroach a little more)._ And then the girl opens her eyes and she is standing in her father’s study, just as before, with the hearth crackling before her and the clattering of the road outside at its usual volume. All that she had to remember the thing and its strange home was a slick layer of cold sweat on her forehead and the memory of a name, more ancient than ancient, echoing in a star-dotted sky.

\--

“I said yes, obviously,” Ehlan says, gently scritching her nails on Griff’s scalp. “I said yes, and began training, and each time I visited the Far Plane it hurt a little less and I got a little stronger. And when the time was right I showed up at the door of the keep, with nothing but my name.”

“Or so they thought?”

She smiles against his hair. “Precisely. I was not the small and foolish girl they looked down on for all those years. I was someone to be respected… and those who didn’t learn quickly were dealt with.”

“Well,” Griff says, twisting to look up at her. “All but one.”

“I don't know,” Ehlan says, pensive, running her thumb along the scar slashed across his lips. “I’d say I dealt with your attitude pretty handily. You certainly never tried to steal anything from me again.”

“That you know of.”

She laughs and leans down to kiss him - it’s nice to be close like this, to not have to bend utterly in half. Ehlan untangles herself, stands, stretches. “It’s late. I should wrap my hair before bed.”

Griff rubs his eyes and gazes out the window. “I suppose we do have a lot to do tomorrow. Hostile takeover looming and all.” He hops from the bed and takes her hand. “Would you like help with your hair? It’d go faster with two of us.”

Ehlan looks down at him with amusement - he’s never offered help before, only watched intently as she put it in plaits or wrapped it. “Oh? You think you’ve studied enough?” He huffs, embarrassed, and she chuckles, putting one hand through his hair and mussing it. “Very sweet, love,  but I think it would take twice as long if I have to teach you how to do it. _That’s_ a task for a day that hasn’t utterly tired me out. I wouldn’t mind a song, though,” she adds sweetly.

A smile spreads across his face, and he inclines his head to kiss her hand. “For you? Anything.”

“Don’t waste your best work on me,” she calls mildly, sitting at her vanity and opening a jar of peppermint scented paste, swiping a large dab onto the back of one hand. “You’ll probably want to save that for when we visit the Far Plane tomorrow.”

“....what?”

**Author's Note:**

> -Ehlan's patron was once 3 separate mortal men, cultists in service to an eldritch god, but during a ritual sacrifice, they were accidentally fused and banished to an extraplanar realm all its own. It misses being mortal quite dearly and so asks those it grants power to give it peeks into life again.  
> -Ehlan's patron is true neutral. It has no moral judgement of its charges and doesn't care so much what they get up to so long as they're safe and happy. It sees them all as children - Ehlan especially, as it feels very guilty about what happened to her and its part in her story. It loves her very dearly and is ecstatic about her marriage (he squeezes Griff very tightly. He doesn't care for that so much.)  
> -Griff and Ehlan succeed in their plans to shred the nobility of the city utterly and go on to fleece far more people as the two of them grow stronger. After a brief pit stop in a castle for Griff and Special Warlock Prison for Ehlan, the two escape to an extraplanar tavern - existing outside of space and time yet simultaneously in every timeline and realm - run by a kindly firbolg, and they stay there indefinitely.  
> -After a while, Ehlan is so tethered to her patron that it sort of itches to exist on the material plane. Not painfully, just a bit uncomfortable. The tavern is the only other place where she is completely and utterly comfortable.
> 
> More about both of them at transmollymauks.tumblr.com !


End file.
